


Give Me My Heart (I Need It To Beat To A Rhythm I Can Dance To)

by Whispering_Sumire



Series: Wait For Me To Come Home [1]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alpha - Freeform, Big Brothers, Big Sisters, Bikers, Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Character Death, Character Death, Character Study, Coming of Age, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Derek Hale Needs a Hug, Derek Hale is the Left Hand, Drama, F/F, F/M, Falling In Love, Family Drama, Family Feels, Family Fluff, Feels, Fighting, Fluff and Angst, Grief/Mourning, Heartfelt Conversations, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, LGBTQ Female Character, Laura Hale Needs A Hug, Laura Hale-centric, Laura is the alpha, Left Hand - Freeform, Lesbian Character, Little Brothers, Love, Original Character(s), POV Laura, Pack, Pack Bonding, Pack Dynamics, Pack Family, Pack Feels, People Are Flawed, Peter Hale Is The Left Hand, Pre-Canon, Pre-Series, Puppy Piles, Siblings, Symbolism, The Hale Family, The Hale Fire, The Hale Pack - Freeform, Weretiger, Werewolves, death is a central theme, talia is the alpha
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-24
Updated: 2018-09-24
Packaged: 2019-07-16 12:16:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,688
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16085924
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Whispering_Sumire/pseuds/Whispering_Sumire
Summary: "I think I'm in love," Laura says immediately, the feeling blooming within her heart, giddy and effervescent, bubbly fizz-sparkle overwhelming her in a surge of rushing blood and pheromones."Really, now?" Peter drawls, and she grins at him."Honest, truly, I do."Derek squints at her, "Isn't that from chitty-chitty bang-bang? Her name wouldn't happen to beTruly Scrumptious, would it?""No,"Satomi cuts in, amused. "It's Cahya Odette Claire Ongko. Now, back to business.""Whatbusiness?" Peter snaps, unimpressed and impassively annoyed. "You've already said you're remainingneutral."Laura skirts around her Alpha and their Left Hand to sit with Derek in the corner where there're sitting cushions suppliedawayfrom the table—and the conflict, for all that it's mild."I'm not going to be your Best Man," Derek whispers to her, "when you get married to a girl that you fell in love with after onlyfive seconds.""Whatever gave you the idea that you'd have achoice, little brother?"





	Give Me My Heart (I Need It To Beat To A Rhythm I Can Dance To)

**Author's Note:**

> This is essentially Laura's life from womb to fire. There's symbolism, poeticism, puppy-piles, siblings, love and heartbreak. I hope you enjoy the ride.
> 
> A few things about the tags :: I used _Implied/Referenced_ Homophobia, because I do keep it very vague, but it's a part of the conflicts within the story, and it has a big impact on Laura, so, beware. Also, Laura isn't the Alpha, technically, until the very end, and same for Derek with being the Left Hand, but this fic explores the implications of their inheritance on their childhood, so I'm keepin' it in the tags.
> 
> All the love!! Warmth!! Soulhugs!!

☽ Seedling ☾

* * *

Talia Hale fell in love when she was fifteen, with a man that almost nobody approved of.

Six years her senior. A nomad while she was a wolf, his family a Pack of their own- for all that they were human- only, instead of forests and instincts and _magic_ , they had the asphalt, motorcycles, bare fists, and guns. He came into town with smoke behind his teeth, and the sun painting his skin gold. He spoke with her respectfully, as her position called for, without even knowing yet what she was.

She fell in love with his ire as much as he fell in love with her wild, and when they lay together the stars whispered of their beauty, their tragedy, and their love. He would leave, as was his nature, and she would wait for him to return to her with her heart in her eyes and fragments of her soul in his lungs.

She had roots- in the Nemeton, in her territory, in her family- where he did not; staying was something that would **harm** him, in the long run, something that would torture his spirit. And she saw that, accepted it.

Her parents tried to trust her, but they were uncomfortable with it all. He was a **man** , where she was only a _girl_. He was a wanton, fleeting thing, always following the sun, forever moving, where she was a solid, constant guard, proud and dependable in her station. The Alpha-spark still lay with her father, but it was all too soon fleeing **him** to bloom within **her**. The rituals hadn't yet been performed, but Sister Moon, Mother Earth, and Grandmother Death could not be countered. Talia was quickly rising, quickly inheriting what was _always_ meant for her, and they worried for the choices she would make if she was given this gift too early.

"I am going to marry him," she said, when her eyes were nearly red and the moonlight was soaking her dark olive skin. "He is to be my Mate."

"But you are yet a child. He is not of the people, he is human, and his soul lies with the sunlight."

"I am going to marry him," she said again, soft, fierce, her gold hemorrhaging, her light overwhelming. "I am going to Mate with him. Who are **you** to stop me?"

"We are your family. We are your Pack."

"So is he."

* * *

When she was seventeen, and had been with him for two years- though little of that time was actually spent together- she showed him her wolf, and he laughed in the way of one marveling at the majesty of the world. She grinned with sharp-fanged teeth and pushed him under her, and they found the taste of the heavens on each others' tongues, they found atmosphere underneath their skin, and a supernova eclipsed by deep-dark, by ferine-shadow. Together they _lived_ , became one whole with two sets of lungs and two sets of ribs and two beating hearts, all limbs and beauty and base, earthly, _human_ love.

In a month she would find herself irrevocably changed, a child growing within her, and in two more months' time, her Pack would hear the second heartbeat, would scent her going from something fluid- waterfalls beating against mossy cliffs, rushing with the speed of unstoppable nature- to something softer, like lilies and the lullabies meadows sing when they dance against the winds in the summertime.

When she married him- for she **did** marry him, and no one could possibly refute her, though a few did **try** \- she had a baby boy on her hip, all wide, heterochromatic eyes and deep, _deep_ black hair, and **he** had a kutte over his suit. They both smiled in a bright, fearless, undaunted way as they were wed in the forests of Beacon Hills, ordained by both her Pack's Emissary and his own mother, white flowers and sheer curtains hung up in the branches all around them. They kissed with the moon heavy in the sky, again as the sun deigned to rise, and once more as he left her—because **wandering** was in his bones, and, even as they were now, she'd never ask him to learn how to grow roots so he could plant himself with her, not when she knew, better than anyone possibly could, that doing that would only ever be a lesson in frustrated futility.

Besides, she loved him like this, she loved him when he was impossibly **free** , and he loved her when she was honestly **untamed** —even in her duties.

* * *

No one understood them, but everyone was forced, eventually, to accept them.

Carlow, when he was away- which was often- would write letters (he wasn't the type to be interested in technology, nor was he the type to keep hold of anything so material for longer than a month), and Talia would keep them carefully, writing back- though hers were always brief and frank, while **his** were long epics filled with tales and poetry and drawings- on kiss-stained parchment, encouraging their son to write, also, when he was old enough.

Talia commanded her territory pragmatically and revolutionarily, she collected the Alphas from the territories surrounding her, and, reasonable and proud, defiant and confident, created a region they would all rule together—she would never ask to be deferred to, in this, but the other Alphas saw her mind, saw that she could sink into the body of a wolf- an ability she, admittedly, _inherited_ , but was thoroughly _worthy_ of- and they submitted to her wisdom, anyway.

Her youth did not matter, not in the eyes of wolves, not when she so clearly transcended it, her soul older than all of theirs' put together, her maturity a vast, incomprehensible thing.

Carlow brought her allies, jovially and nonchalantly, on the coattails of dramatic misunderstandings that meant he never did so _purposefully_ , and, yet, his journeys became soaked in accidental diplomacy, in money that he won gambling, collected from contract-jobs and his MC's earnings- made both on the _right_ and _**wrong**_ side of the law- in textured, grand experiences.

When Philip, their son, was two, and Talia nineteen, she demanded him to her bed the moment he returned to her, willfully wanting another babe at her breast—because she loved children, and she loved _his_ children most of all, and she wanted a piece of him to carry while he was gone. He indulged her easily (He did not remind her that this would be yet more responsibility on her shoulders, because she already knew, and because he had long since learned how impossible it was to deny her _anything_ when she had set her mind to it).

* * *

She knows the moment she wakes up next to him, sweat cooling their bodies, her son crying out for her, that she's with child.

She knows during the second week of her pregnancy, when she feels the wolf rise within her, urgent, and has to leave Philip with her little brother- her Left Hand, her most trusted- to run in the woods, paws against the thrumming ground, claws digging into soil that pressed up between her toes- as if Gaea herself were trying to reach out to her- fangs breaking the necks of rabbits and deer, tongue and maw soaked in thick, rich-sweet, intoxicating blood—she knows the pup growing within her has the soul of an Alpha, and she _rejoices._

* * *

Three months before their second child was born, Carlow was caught and sentenced to two years for manslaughter in the second degree. His letters stopped coming, and their bond- always an undeniable, indestructible thing- became ephemeral, tentative, like sand falling through her fingers, soft grains captured by winds that carried them farther and farther away from her.

She did not mourn, but she **did** become less herself, less human and dutiful and constant.

"I have always respected your love for him," Peter told her, in the dusk of a new-moon night, when all of Sister Moon's daughter-stars were dancing rebelliously, gleeful and mischievous in their unsupervised twilight. "I fought mom and dad in your name, because you are my big sister and I knew he was yours and you were his, because I trusted you with your own heart."

She looked over at him, then, and for a moment saw a child in the same way her parents did, when they had looked at her all those years ago, and _doubted_.

"Get to the point, brother," she said, and he sighed, shook his head, and rapped his knuckles gently against her chest.

Her bond with him was a complex, winding, and, at first glance, thin, _thin_ thread. But, in this, she saw what their parents could not, she saw that her baby brother's bond with her was made of spider-silk piano-wire and wove itself into cunning-clever webs of bright, _vicious_ ingenuity. She knew that his bond wasn't a fickle or small thing, that it was only ever given with his trust and respect and acceptance, none of which were easy things to gain.

Sometimes, she wondered if their parents- always unsettled by him, always unsettled by Aunt Shy, the Left Hand before him- had truly mistaken their bonds with him as frail, or if they had never gained a true-bond with him in the first place.

"No," he laughed, full of headstrong amusement that so much resembled the sky and the stars soaking within it that the sound might've taken her breath away, if she weren't already used to it. "If I spell it out for you, you'll only be angry with me, and I have faith in your _brilliant_ mind, Alpha. You'll figure it out, I'm sure."

"I'd be happier if you spoke **plainly**!" She called out to him as he swept away.

"I **know**!" He called back, unapologetic, over his shoulder. 

Little limbs pounded within her, a battle-cry or a howl of solidarity, she did not know. She cradled her round belly with a rumbled purr either way, and decided not to think on her brother's contrary behavior any longer.

She had work to do.

(In the years spent without her Mate, Talia was merciless and violent, a demon in wolf's skin, and if she had not already been legendary, she would've **become** so, then. As it was, her legends _changed_.)

* * *

Laura's first memories of her father are mingled with violence and an old, wrinkled face.

She remembers her grandfather—a man who talked in a voice like crepe paper, a strong, robust person, with meaty, sausage-fingered hands, muscles like barrels, and she remembers how he was much, _much_ shorter than her mother. Laura knew that because she was barely old enough to walk yet, and was hoisted up against her mother's side- surrounded by comforting warmth and the strength of a dominating, soothing presence she'd later associate with words like _Alpha_ and _Pack_ \- as the woman answered her door to greet the sight of him stood out on her porch.

Her hazel eyes and her mother's chocolate looked down upon him with all the confidence of **authority** \- she didn't know, yet, her potential, at least not in _words_ , but she was **proud** , and she had the backbone of a leader, even now- and he looked back up at them much the same, and without any words exchanged, all three of them knew with absolute certainty that they were **equals**.

The adults spoke, all their words like pieces of pretty glass held up to glitter against the scorching light of the great big _thing_ in the sky that was too far away to touch—aesthetically pleasing, sometimes uncomfortable, and always incomprehensible.

She felt little hands tickle her feet and gurgled a giggle at her big brother, who was about as interested in the conversation as **she** was. Which is to say: not at all.

Her memory trickles then, washed-out and dull, before coming back with completely saturated vividity: Harsh, cruel sunlight beating against the briskly stark black and yellow road, surrounded by green, then by dusty, orange-hued, heat-hazed desert. A motorcycle grumble-purring along beside them, her Grandpa's kutte flapping behind him like crows' wings. A small, decrepit parking lot filled with motorcycles placed squarely in front of a white-brick building that was being strangled by ivy, had small, smudged windows, and a wooden door, surrounded by desert fields that proclaimed proudly that **this** was the _middle of **nowhere**._

Men and women wearing kuttes flocked around the place like birds around their nest, cigarettes and conversation and laughter all undercut with something that spoke of _danger_ , but she wasn't afraid, because it also spoke fiercely of _family_ and her Pack had the same atmosphere, even if the flavor was more wood-wild than street-wicked, more **wolf** than **crow**.

The people perked up at the sight of her Grandfather, becoming attentive and serious-silent as they, along with her mother, followed him inside.

She remembers the feel of her mother's hands, clutch-tight, hearing her mother's heartbeat get louder, quick-thump. She remembers a man wiping a bar counter, and the way his eyes- a mirror of hers, of Philip's- widened when they lit on she and her mother. There was a breathless lull of suspended time, then her grandfather was shouting, and his crows were charging, vaulting over the bar and dragging the man by his ink-blot curls back out into the desert parking lot.

Her mother rushed after them, Philip hot on her heels despite his small legs and his mellow, apathetic personality- she remembers him smiling slightly at her, like he couldn't have less of a care in the world; he was very mature for five- but she didn't move to stop them.

(Her dad would explain, later, that his club was enacting their form of **justice** that day. That it was retribution for abandoning his wife and children to cowardice while he was in the pen, and for far too long after he was out of it.)

Her mother cupped a strong hand that trembled slightly around the back of her neck as the man was overcome by the violence of his Murder, all of them kicking and punching- he did not take it quietly, he fought back with exceptional, **awe** some ferocity- the scene one of chaos and loudness and something else altogether that was almost poignant, painted in the sweaty, uninhibited, irritant-daze of summer, the ambiance one of sand and tar and rubber and leather, crisp and over-bright.

When they were done, the man was barely managing sitting upright, leaning an arm on the seat of one of the bikes, bloody-knuckled hand running through his hair, eyes aglow with exhilaration and something settled-happy- even though it was obvious he _lost_ that fight- crinkled around the edges with the wide, crooked, unbridled smile that was unraveling into this impossible, gorgeous, heart-warming laugh right before her very eyes.

Her mother walked toward him, then, her gait steady though her breath was hitching. She knelt, gazed at him steadily as his laugh wound down, returned to a smile that was less like the edge of a very keen pocket-knife and more like the reverence of a faithful man toward his god. His arms reached out, and they were mottled tapestries of savagery, but they were _firm_ , and her mother, elegantly, trustingly, fell into them, allowing him the right to hold her, Laura, and Philip, all, _together_.

They breathed in synchronicity and found solidarity, validation, and serenity, there, in each other, soaking in the scents and the heartbeats and the silence and the grounding, tacit feeling of _home_.

When her mother left the embrace to stand, she left Laura and Philip melted against him, and he tilted his head up toward her, wondering eyes searching her face (Laura will never in her life have to question what love looks like, for she saw it so clearly in him, that moment). Her mother did not smile- her mother almost never _did_ \- and she didn't speak- she was a quiet person, truly, more animal than most (at least, as far as Laura _knew_ , she'd learn, later, that her father had the uncanny ability to dig the humanity out of her mother and _hold_ it there, exposed and raw and naked, until she wasn't a woman ruled by a wolf or a wolf ruled by a woman, until she was just—honestly, beautifully, refreshingly, **herself** )- instead, she bent down fingertips spread like tree-branches, holding up the sky, beneath the man's jaw, and she pressed her lips to his, swift, but with a depth Laura wouldn't understand until she was much older, before moving away, gliding back into the building to find a first-aid kit for him.

She remembers feeling a soft chuckle build in her father's chest as he shook his head slightly, and how she'd grabbed a strand of his thick hair to _yank_ , because it seemed like the proper response at the time. He'd looked at her, startled, but already beginning to grin again, lop-sided puckish.

"Hey," he'd said, his voice like river-soaked gravel, rolled around in sugar.

She'd cooed at him, and he'd grinned all the wider before tucking both she and her big brother under his chin, squeezing their little bodies adoringly against his. 

There had been many, many big, coppery feelings within her in that moment, all of them explosive and overjoyed and too much—mostly, she came to the conclusion that she loved him, and he loved her, and this was _family_ , and she decided she was perfectly happy with all of that.

* * *

Very soon after her father comes home, her mother's belly starts to get swell, and Laura is told by everyone around her that she's going to be a big sister, that there's a babe growing within her mother's body (which, she thought, must be very awkward for everyone involved, has to wonder if _she_ was ever like that, a pebble-shaped alien _within_ somebody else. She finds out, later, when she manages to ask some approximation of her question, that she _was_ , and she's vaguely horrified).

When she's days away from becoming three, her baby brother is born into the world with a naked scalp and two fuzzy-black caterpillars above his wide, _wide_ lily-pad eyes, and she falls in love with him immediately and absolutely.

Even when she is eight and he is five and her mother gives birth to two new little siblings for her, Derek is still her favorite, and she is still his. The Pack would often say that they belonged to each other, and she would adamantly, unapologetically agree, while he would say, voice dryer than clay, that neither of them could possibly belong to _anyone_ , they were far too **free** for such a thing.

She appreciated his sense of humor, even if, often, no one else did. She rather thought that was the whole point.

He was quiet and animal, in their mother's way, and the moment he was capable, he cleaved to Laura over everyone else, and their mother second-most, and their father not at all. His emotions were often too big for him, and he was often too clumsy with them; some days he would sit with her and they would talk for _hours_ , much too quickly for anybody else to follow. She was bossy and he was sarcastic and they insulted each other lovingly in order to figure out their own minds, she was pragmatic optimism where he was militant, and sometimes **caustic** , submissivity. 

Philip once told her that _she_ was the reason Derek was such a quiet child, as, whenever he was in need of _anything_ , she'd guess at it right away, tend to it thoughtlessly, and, in turn, whenever she told him to do something, he complied, easily, because he was like a little duckling when it came to her, because he sought her approval excessively- she gave it to him unconditionally- and because he'd learned almost from the moment he opened his eyes that if he _listened to her_ entirely, he'd be _taken care of_ entirely.

Peter saw the way they were, saw the way _Derek_ was, and smiled sadly, shaking his head, before going to their mother to tell her that Derek would be his successor.

The Left Hand to Laura's Alpha.

For now, it wasn't important. For now, they were children, and, though they would be raised into the duty that they would inherit when the time came, for now, it was not their worry. Their worry was to _live_ , to be anachronistic in their youth and let everyone else around them deal with the ways of the world.

* * *

☽ Blooming ☾

* * *

When Derek is fourteen, and Laura sixteen, soon to be seventeen, they both fall in love at exactly the same time.

As they are subsumed by cravings of the heart, their mother becomes with child again, and, too, malicious intent begins to swirl heavy in the air as hunters, who want only to break their long-standing treaty, **circle** , and one of the Alphas of their region decides he wants war to be waged in the name of vengeance. Which is to say: their timing is _horrible_.

But, though they were taught staunch discipline and steadfast dedication to their duties, they were never taught to deny themselves something like _love_ —their parents an example of allowing your heart to beat alongside another persons', every tradition they forsook to be together unwittingly instilling a romantic rebelliousness within their children. And, so, fearless and welcoming of the feeling, they fall, despite the tumultuous atmosphere surrounding them.

She doesn't know much about Derek's One, her little brother has never been very communicative, as for **hers** , well.

Laura's mother, Uncle Peter, Derek, and she were visiting the Ito Pack, mostly bartering with Satomi- trading tea and stories and other things Laura was not entirely privy to- as Peter subtly tried to convince the wisened old wolf to become involved in affairs she most adamantly did _not_ **want** to become involved in (namely: younger wolves' foolishness, naiveté, and pride). Whilst the others were talking, trading in a type of tacit politics, she found herself wandering the traditional-style mansion, a place that, she knew, acted as sanctuary for so many, a haven that collected nomads resting between one journey and the next, that healed those who were injured and protected and hid those who needed it.

Her mother did not find her father here, though this was where he was staying when she _did_ find him; Laura will later love the romanticized parallel that comes with **that** when she pulls open the fusama to a room filled with orchids and pots of various other growing plant-life, another fusama opened out to the engawa, letting light and clear, fresh air in—and there's a _tiger_ lounging lethargically in the middle of the tatami mat, startling grey eyes blinking up slowly, lazily, at her.

"Well, hello," she says, breathless without even really knowing why. The tiger stands, a fluid movement of grace as fur smooths down to mocha-cream skin, to wild waves of silk-mahogany hair, to a flawless, feminine body.

"Hello," the stranger returns, scowling, nearly mocking, as one smoothly angled eyebrow raises condescendingly under short-trimmed bangs. "Aren't you one of the Hale brood? What are you doing so far from your litter, dog?"

 _"Exploring,"_ she grins, unbothered, and the other girl's rain-cloud eyes narrow, wary. "My name's Laura, what's yours?"

"Cahya," comes the terse reply, and, even then, it only comes when Laura's swept right up to her, toe to toe, unrelentingly chipper. Cahya looks nothing less than absolutely unsettled.

"Let's be friends." Because she'd only ever met _**one** other_ who could do the full-shift like she could, and that was her _mom_. Besides, Cahya seems interesting, and Laura's only known her for all of five seconds.

The girl's brow knits, and she paces back a step before brushing past Laura with an indifferent, apathetic, "No," thrown over her shoulder.

"What? Why?" Laura asks, only slightly indignant; while she's used to getting her way, she's _also_ used to **Philip** , who is a hedonist forever unaffected by _anything_ , and **Derek** , who speaks in perpetual monotone and is most often being sarcastic in a way that anyone who didn't know him well would mistake for being _gravely_ **serious**. "Don't be silly."

"I'm **not** being _silly."_

"Okay, then: don't be _irrelevant_. I've never met a weretiger before, what does your betashift look like? And are you a nudist? Because that guy over there is **staring.** "

Cahya looks over to the- werewolf, he _smells_ like a **werewolf** \- sitting on one of the cushions around a coffee table in the wide, open-air parlor they seem to be passing through to get to wherever the tigress is intent on going. Misty eyes congeal, darken like ink-blots dropped carelessly on water-color clouds, a promise of that same darkness eclipsing whoever may go against her in them, plain for all to see, and the man shudders before promptly returning his gaze to his book, hands shaking, scent now soured with fear. Laura can see a small smirk playing on Cahya's lips at that, as she returns her attention to their path, before her face re-paints itself vicious-blank.

That was kind of an awesome moment to be a part of, Laura thinks happily, as she slips her hands in her pockets and continues following, although she falls behind some, pace more leisurely than Cahya's **brisk**.

The other girl eventually leads her back to the tea room that Peter, Derek, and her mother are in with Satomi, opening the fusama with a half frustrated, vaguely irritated air. "Wolves," she says in general greeting- no one bats an eye at her nudity, as 'were culture far more allowing of it, though Peter does slant his eyebrows judgementally at the fact that she's in the nude _whilst **also**_ interrupting a **formal** gathering- before cooly ushering Laura inside with a, "I think _this one_ belongs to _you."_

She leaves them by way sliding the fusama shut after her.

"I think I'm in love," Laura says immediately, the feeling blooming within her heart, giddy and effervescent, bubbly fizz-sparkle overwhelming her in a surge of rushing blood and pheromones.

 _"Really_ , now?" Peter drawls, and she grins at him.

"Honest, truly, I do."

Derek squints at her, "Isn't that from chitty-chitty bang-bang? Her name wouldn't happen to be **Truly Scrumptious** , would it?"

 _"No,"_ Satomi cuts in, amused. "It's Cahya Odette Claire Ongko. Now, back to business."

" **What** business?" Peter snaps, unimpressed and impassively annoyed. "You've already said you're remaining _neutral."_

Laura skirts around her Alpha and their Left Hand to sit with Derek in the corner where there're sitting cushions supplied **away** from the table—and the conflict, for all that it's mild.

"I'm not going to be your Best Man," Derek whispers to her, "when you get married to a girl that you fell in love with after only **five seconds**."

"Whatever gave you the idea that you'd have a _choice_ , little brother?"

"Well," Satomi says jovially in the background as Derek's face slowly but helplessly morphs, evolving from deadpan to **smiling** , dimples, bunny-teeth, sunlight shattered upon the ripples of his swamp-water eyes and all. "There is the matter of the _tea."_

* * *

Talia knows her daughter is not naive, but she is _generous_ with her **heart**.

The girl loves _freely_ , if not _flippantly_.

It has never been a problem, in fact, it's often been beautiful, the way her virtue builds up the foundations of her leadership, secures roots in her when she bears her teeth with a smile, opens the windows of her eyes and lets _light_ in.

She sees more of her husband than **herself** in her daughter, in the care-free wind-swept throaty laughter of her, which is to say: when Laura told them she'd fallen spontaneously in love, Talia had believed her, and had known with _certainty_ that her daughter meant it in the _absolute_ way Talia had meant it, herself, when she'd told _her_ parents that Carlow was to be her Mate. So, when the Packs come together, as they sometimes do, to feast and to celebrate- this time, in the name of Grandmother Death, in grief and mourning for Ennis' lost Beta, yes, but also in pride of that person's life, in hopes that the Black Lady will take them well, and kindly, into the wood on the other side of the Veil- and her daughter catches a rabbit for the weretiger of Satomi's Pack, the symbolism in the offering clear- although Laura subverts tradition by letting the animal live, and further by half ignoring the clear rejection with an overjoyed, airy sort of smile- she is not surprised.

When Carlow, beside her, kids about the _phases_ children go through with an _indulgent_ chuckle, she **is**.

She knows that humans' cultures are very different from the cultures those of **the people** are soaked in, she knows that, where sex and bodies are considered fluid and sacred, here, they are sometimes shameful and seen with _contempt_ , there. But Carlow has always been of an abstract nature, an anarchist, an outlaw, and she'd never seen him cling to mundane societal norms, she'd only ever seen the _oppisite_.

But she remembers, in this moment- as her daughter flirts and flutters and manages to get Cahya dancing with her before the girl can even _notice_ that she's just been dragged into everything she was trying to refuse, too busy debating, still caught up in whatever contrary conversation Laura had started even as she's spun and dipped- every mildly snide, biased, derisive comment her husband has ever made in regards to most things _not_ heteronormative.

And, for the first time since she chose him, she feels **doubt** swell tempestuously in her gut, the taste it leaves in her mouth bitter, disquieting, and hollow.

* * *

Laura storms out of the house, frustrated but not yet coming undone. The sky is riotous, screaming its' thundery wrath and stomping its' ill-tempered rain and she _feels it_ \- in her bones, in her too-quick heart- as she stands just outside of her home with tears of helpless fury running down her cheeks, bare feet sinking into spongy soil.

She turns her head up, heaving ragged breath, choking on her rage, and when she feels a tentative hand settling on her shoulder, she _strikes_.

It's Peter—she'd known it would be, even with the downpour washing away every ounce of scent, filling the air with water-logged mud-slop and earthy tender-growth.

Ever since she was a child, proud and ferocious, chaotic-feral when she was truly upset, he'd always been the one to come after her whenever she'd run off in a fit. She and he are similar in that way, with undercurrents of ferine, psychotic, _explosive_ anger that they can hide as easily as their animal nature, that they gentle by utilizing words and knowledge instead of the brute, terrifying strength that festers within them like mold-moss in the depths of a watery cave, forever deprived of any kind of light. He was the one who helped her plot out torture schemes for the teachers she hated, the clients and colleagues **he** despised: horrific, vindicating, blood-soaked daydreams that they put away to quietly act as sane as they _ought_ to be when they were done with them (even Derek, who is by far the closest of all the Pack to the man, can't handle him— _either of them_ , when they're like that). And when she was subsumed by her manic-bright, _crazed_ temper, when even her Alpha mother was incapable of calming her, when her father thought it better to leave her alone, when the others- with the exception of only **two** \- felt half terrified of her and her capacity for _violence_ , Peter was the one, as he is now, who went to her.

She shrieks at him- her wolf so close to the surface, just underneath her skin- as he counters her claws. She spins, meaning to dig her heel into his side, but he leaps back evasively, falls into a crouch.

For a moment, when he looks at her, she can see the question in his eyes: is this what she needs? To lash out? And the second he seems to find his answer- in the way her fingers are half curled at her sides, the way her knees are bowed, the way her body sizzles with _fight_ \- his expression goes hard, and he lunges at her, all bite and shred and howl.

Even as they brawl, she weeps, even as she is a body of pure emotion—heartache, shame, ridicule, rage. Her muscles tense, teeth snap, claws click, there is no eye in her storm, no calm before it, she is a thing that razes, climbs, saturates the ground with acid that erodes, seeps into the oil-blood of the earth and contaminates **every** goddamn thing. So big, and mighty, and full-up that she loses herself in the infinity of it, corrupted completely.

He **takes** it, lets her heave her destruction on him, until he runs out of patience—because, for all that she will one day be Alpha, she is still young, and he is still the Left Hand, their Packs' soldier, warrior, knight, _assassin_ , when he is not playing in politics. Which is to say: when he is no longer willing to indulge or abide her tantrum, he sinks his own claws into her, snatches her up bodily, throws her onto the ground, and pins her there.

Her awareness spins, and her fury froths, bubbles, pulls back enough for her to be struck- like someone took a hammer and nailed the thing through her sternum, plunging it into the bloody depths of the organ that is her heart, like **lightning** \- by _devastation_.

He straddles her, constricting, hands holding her wrists above her head, his knees securely around her waist, glowing blue eyes boring into hers, breath heavy with exertion, until she pleads, to no one, to him, to the soggy sky sagging above them, to her siblings- who've gathered on the porch stairs, watching or empathizing or something else altogether- and **all** she can think to ask is, _"Why?"_

"Oh, pup," Peter sighs, rolling off of her to lay pressed against her side, "there isn't any reason behind things like this, not really."

He wraps an arm around her as her body cringes away from a sob she cannot escape, the rain descending catastrophic upon them. "I just **love** her. Can't I just love her? Or... or is he right? Maybe I don't love her at all, maybe I—"

"Don't do that to yourself, deirfiúr beag," Philip murmurs as he comes to lay on her other side. He doesn't hold her as Peter does, though there is a warmth in the line of his body along hers, he just puts his arms beneath his head, crosses one leg over the other, and gazes, like she, at the discordant, dusky sky. His voice is like summer mists, languid and happy, even now. "Don't question who you are because of him."

"What **he** said," little Cora agrees blithely, all of nine and steadfast in every sunshine bright opinion. She climbs down from her perch on the porch-stairs, her twin brother's solemn hand held in hers as they both pace toward her through the sloshing mud and promptly throw themselves on her, full-body.

"Oof," she exhales, Peter moving to accommodate them, brushing a hand through Gabriel's mop of soaked honey curls, as Philip does absolutely nothing to hide his mild amusement at her new predicament, namely: "You guys are _heavy."_

"Think of them as an analogy for your burdens," Philip chuckles, while Derek moves around them all, coming to a stand at her head, peering down at her.

"Yeah," her little brother says, lightly, "you'll learn to deal. I have faith in you. Dad can go suck a dick."

And, considering that _that's_ the whole problem, she laughs. Wetly and tiredly, all of it bursting forth unbidden, raindrops coating her smile and her teeth and her tongue, the taste of them so like her happy sadness. Derek grins at her, plops down, and starts to braid her muddy hair.

They can hear, over the rainfall, their parents fighting, loud and nerve-wracking, especially with her mother in the late stages of pregnancy. They don't go back inside until it is quiet again.

Laura swallows down her guilt, her pain, and hopes resolutely, valiantly, and fearfully, to someday change her father's mind.

* * *

She was still quite young when Cora and Gabe were born, and all of her memories of their new-soft bodies are worn with time and her various frustrations and joys with them as they grew older. It's not so with Michael, who's born to them all on a summer afternoon, wailing and quaking and _lovely_.

The midwife and the doula work quickly to wash him and make sure he is healthy and _good_ , before handing him back to her exhausted mother, who'd only been in labor for an hour or so- the fastest birth she's ever had- but who was still sagging with it. There's an air of breathless elation in the room, incapable of being soured by the fight that had broken out barely a month ago, by things still unresolved.

The midwife finishes zher work with Talia, cleaning her and making sure she's alright before zhe goes, though the doula, as planned, stays.

Her mother holds the new babe to her side as they all gather around, laying as many with the mother and her child as can fit, the rest slipping down to the cushions and comforters wrapped around the bed, nest-like.

Laura, curled around her mother's legs and feet, smiles when she sees little Mikey's sun-drenched mossy tree-bark eyes twinkle up at Philip, sees how Philip helplessly dimples back down at him, utterly besotted.

"Welcome to the realm of having a favorite sibling," she whispers with unhindered delight, and he chuckles softly, presses fingertips to cherubic little cheeks.

"Nah," he tells her airily, "my love for **all** you lot is equivalent."

Mikey gurgles and Philip grins like his whole _universe_ lit up.

"Oh, he's going to get you into a _world_ of trouble, deartháir mór. I can already **see** it," she murmurs, giddy, pressing her cheek into the side of her mother's knees and settling in. Coating the child in the Pack's scent for the first few weeks, fostering a strong and healthy Pack-bond with him, is essential. And she has to admit she's always loved this, a pile of over-warm bodies, tangled together, the contentedness of everyone she loves, close enough to touch.

"I don't believe you," Philip decides, before returning with a coo and a kiss to the baby who most _definitely_ has him wrapped around their chubby little finger.

She snickers, grins, but lets him have his useless denial for now.

* * *

☽ Wilting ☾

* * *

"Coco!" Laura crows as she waltzes into the food mart, and Cahya glares at her.

"That is not my name, gila. I've told you this."

Laura shrugs jovially and leans over the counter to plant a kiss on the clerk's cheek. Contrary to her prickly nature, Cahya actually tilts her head for it— it took Laura kissing her on the cheek by way of greeting _every time she **saw** her_ for her aloof girlfriend to become so accepting of it. She's actually a little proud of herself for that.

"Kamu ini mustahil," Cahya mutters, shaking her head as Laura turns around to hop up on the counter by the register, legs swaying a little against crinkling displays of colorful candies. "Are you even here to buy anything? Or is your goal to **vex** me?"

"I'm your lover, it's my _job_ to **vex** you," Laura informs her cheerfully, and the tiger squints up at her in disbelief.

"I think something got wired wrong," the girl says, reaching up to tap Laura's forehead, "in there. I worry for you, sometimes, truly." Her raised eyebrows and continuously knocking knuckle are all deadpanned concern, and Laura makes a split-second decision to snatch the offending finger with her teeth, grinning victoriously at her captured prey. Cahya makes a face, disgusted, before contradicting herself by pulling Laura down and in with her caught finger to kiss **her** on the cheek. The move is so honestly surprising that Laura's jaw drops.

Cahya's winsome smirk is nothing less than vicious when she pulls away.

Laura claps her hand to the feeling of supple lips against her cheek, tingle-soft- as if the press of her palm will keep the fleeting sensation there longer- gasping in faux-offence, "You tricked me!"

"Yes," Cahya agrees, utterly content, as she rounds her station to get the mop from the back, probably planning on cleaning some while there's a lull in business.

Laura shrugs with a sigh, "Worth it."

 _"Gila,"_ Cahya snorts.

Laura hums lightly, tugging on the pigtail braids Derek had woven from her hair. Wolves are tactile creatures, cuddling up with one another in a huddle of warm bodies, hugging, and playing with each others' hair, trading clothes, being near, it all brings about a sense of tacit comfort, it's settling, grounding, and _very_ important when a child's wolf is awakening within them as Derek's has been for the past few years. Peter had explained that, since he's been in training and already undertaken some of the rituals, his wolf recognizes what it's meant to be, what it's _going_ to be for their Pack when the time comes and her generation inherits. He'd said that a Left Hand is stronger in some ways, more angry and brutal, a bigger, nastier type of monster, and- while there are reasons for this, while he promises it will not only come in handy when Derek transitions from **new** to **settled** but be necessary and more comfortable for the boy in the long run- this part has been _difficult_. That being said, Derek's struggle, and her own distress, have culminated in the two siblings clinging to each other far more than they normally would, the rest of the homebound Pack- but for her father and her mother- circling them, comforting them in turns.

She thinks that, even if they were less upset, she still would've had Derek do her hair. He's always been better at it, anyway. But, right now, she will admit, with the lingering scent of him, the ghost of fingers brushing through silk black tendrils to part them and plait them as he hummed some operatic melody- probably whatever song the cellist girl he's finally managed to get to date him has been practicing of late- she feels a little better.

"You are moping, sayangku," Cahya says, sweeping past her, trailing suds and chemical water along the linoleum floor. Laura scrunches up her nose.

 _"Aww,_ **babe,** " she coos, "do you miss my voice already? Need me to pay attention to you? All you had to do was ask, darling; I'm always willing to lavish you with—"

 _"No,"_ Cahya cuts in, rolling her eyes dramatically. "I'm asking after you, because you're playing with your hair, and you only do that when you're thinking too deeply. So: what is wrong?"

"You want me to _complain_ at you?" Laura asks, half teasing, half... unsure.

Cahya takes a deep breath, putting the mop back in its' grimy yellow mop-bucket as she turns to the wolf, folding her arms across her chest. "This girl," she sighs, shaking her head, fond but exasperated. "I want you **happy** , sayangku, and right now you are not, so, yes, lay all your woes on me. Maybe I can help you with them."

Laura lets her hands drop from her braids to her lap with an explosive exhale. "It's... just. My dad."

Cahya presses her lips together. "It is too often that, as of late."

Laura huffs a little, her eyes drawn from the curl of her own fingers to the girl she loves as the tiger prowls toward her, slots herself between Laura's legs, hands going to Laura's hips, crystallized ash eyes gazing up at her searchingly.

"What did he do this time?"

Laura shrugs. "It's not that big a deal; it's that stupid dance. He wants me to go with a _boy."_

"Hm. The dance I told you I would not go to because I thought it was a foolish adolescent thing that made no sense?"

Laura bites her lip but can't quite keep herself from smiling. "Yep," she agrees, "that's the one."

"Well. I still think it is foolish, but I will go with you, now."

Laura bursts out laughing, winds her arms and legs around the girl to pull her in, bring her body close. And Cahya's snorting, muttering something or other under her breath——

A sound, a howl, ferociously distraught, drowns out every sense, sensation, thought, freezes her, chills her to the bone with something akin to **terror** , because that's _Derek_ , that's her _baby brother_ , and she can feel his distress through the Pack-bonds, and something more than that, something loud and aching and sharp.

Breathless, adrenaline surging, heartbeat rabbiting, she pushes Cahya away, slides off of the counter as quickly as she can, stumbling and clumsy in her rush, in her **shock**. She feels _cold_ , like her blood-stream has gone white-noise and her mind is fuzzy, bristling, too slow and too fast all at once.

"Sayang? What's—" "I'm—I'm sorry, I'm sorry," her ears ring, everything vacillates from distortion to buzzing hyper-clarity. "I've gotta go, I've." She has enough presence of mind to peck a quick goodbye kiss to her worried lover's lips before she's out of there like a storm gale, running to her car and speeding toward the feeling of her brother's **pain**.

 _Fuck_.

* * *

She leaves Derek in his room, Philip, Mikey, and the twins all curled up around him.

All she has right now is that her brother's wolf's eyes have changed because he was made to _mercy- **kill**_ the one he loved, and her mother is out with her _father_ instead of **Peter** , in order to do damage-control by way of reigning in Ennis, disappearing Paige Krasikeva's body, and dealing with **Deucalion** —whose peace meeting with Gerard Argent went _completely_ sideways at around the same time all of these other chaotic _disasters_ were happening, because the Universe has apparently decided that now would be a _great_ time to test them.

She stalks downstairs, from the living room, past the dining area, and into the kitchen, where Peter's got his hands clenched around the rim of the sink, his head bowed _low_.

He smells _acrid_ , like grief and guilt and rot and mold.

The room is submerged in darkness, but for the sliver of light spilling through the window, cast by the cheshire-smile moon in the sky.

"What _happened?"_ She hisses, her claws already slipping over her fingernails, anger and something like betrayal writhing like foul lovers on her tongue. She knows her mother would _never_ be out there trying to deal with something like this without him unless there was a _reason_ , she **knows** that his scent, everything that's transpired—it isn't a coincidence.

"I may have..." His voice sounds _raw_ , like someone shed a few layers of his throat with a scalpel, poured rock-salt in his lungs, and re-strung his vocal-chords with frayed rope for good measure, "miscalculated."

 _"Mis **calculated**?"_ Her voice rumbles out nearly unheard under the magnitude of her outraged growl. "My little brother is _devastated_ , he's——and you _miscalculated?"_

A sharp inhale, his grip on the sink going white-knuckle, the muscles in his back tensing even as his head bows _lower_ , as if all of him is compressed under an enormous weight. She has no sympathy, not right now. "Laura..." He sighs, whispers, pleads, begs.

She has **nothing** for him. Goddamn him.

_God **damn** him._

_"Peter,"_ her elder brother's voice cuts in, and **that** tone from someone always so mellow and laughing, tranquil, _equanimous_ , is so incredibly _unexpected_ , that she and her Uncle, both, turn to him in slack-jawed surprise. And if the _tone_ was shocking, how he, with their youngest brother perched securely on his hip, paces briskly over and **punches** the man- bloody-knuckled and teeth-breaking and withholding _nothing_ \- is downright _stupefying_.

" **You** are the adult, **you** are our Left Hand— **you** are _culpable_. Don't you _dare_ justify yourself because the guilt is _painful_. This guilt?" Philip punctuates the word, pounding his palm against their Uncle's chest (Mikey, still too young to know what's going on, watches as the bruise blooms and fades, wide-eyed innocence, sucking the collar of Philip's shirt into his mouth, somehow managing to make slobbery look adorable). "This **pain**? It's something you damn well _deserve."_

There's a long moment of silence, the air filled with fraughtly tense _embittered_ exhilaration, before Peter's face crumples, resigned and accepting and very, very near tears. Philip slaps the man's already healed cheek lightly, companionable, though there's still regret and a littering of complex emotions in his sea-stained eyes when he turns to her with a sigh.

"Der needs you," he tells her, and, mouth dry, feeling floored and dissonant and breathless and completely unwilling to _ever_ be on the other side of her usually cheerful brother's _disappointment_ , she goes.

* * *

She slips into his room, quiet, eases herself onto his bed next to him, and accepts his weight when he curls into her, clinging. The twins are both twined around his back, sleeping soundly despite the overpowering heartbreak in his scent.

Derek weeps- the whole of him caught up in it, incapable of _any_ resistance- into her shoulder, presses his nose into her neck to breathe her in, and she squeezes her eyes shut against the despair that threatens to consume her, an ache in the depths of her soul for him, for what's happened, for what it's made of him.

He was destined, from the moment Peter named him **successor** , to have blue eyes, but not like _this_ , never like this.

"Oh, Der," she whispers into his onyx-tumble hair, wrapping her arms around his ever-growing body.

"It's not his fault," the boy whimpers, a sub-vocal whine erupting in the back of his throat, trembling wetly along every clogging breath. "Uncle Peter was just trying to... to keep Ennis from... but it was still _me_. I'm the one who listened and asked Ennis to give her the Bite. I didn't—It's _my **fault**_. It's mine. It's _mine."_

"Shhh. Hush, hush, pup, hush. Grandmother Death decided it was her time, and—maybe some of us **are** _responsible_ , but it's no one's _fault_ , okay?" She pushes her knuckles under his chin, gets him to look up at her, snotty and tear-soaked and all. "Peter's going to have some things to answer for, and maybe you will, too. And you're going to **grieve** , and it's going to **hurt** , but death happens to all of us, and it's never what we expect. It just **is**. That's _life_ , little brother."

He swallows, sniffles a little, and she turns- half of her still limpet around him, the angle mildly uncomfortable for a moment- to grab a few tissues from the tissue-box on his night-stand. She holds one up to his nose before ordering, "Blow," and for one ridiculous moment- his face a splotchy mess, his breath still caught on a high-pitched whine, still keening with the sobs that continue to wrack his body- he glares at her completely deadpan, and, with a lighter feeling than she's been able to conjure for the past four, _atrocious_ hours, Laura grins.

She raises her eyebrows, nods to her hand still positioned over his nose, and, begrudgingly, he blows. It takes quite a few more tissues to get his face some approximation of clean, ignoring her shoulder until he beckons her to give him another tissue so he can clean the mess he made of her shirt himself. She pushes his slightly tear-damp hair away from his scrunched up frown with a sigh as he does so.

"We're on the outside of... of _human_ society," she tells him, and his muddy swamp-water eyes glisten when they look up from his task to search her gaze. She smiles slightly at him, melancholy. "Death will happen to us more than it happens to other people, and the _way_ it happens, how we _deal_ with it, is going to be _different._ You're going to be my Left Hand, someday, little brother," she takes a deep breath, tries to suffocate the rage she holds for Peter right now with it, scratches her nails against his scalp. He melts against her, eyes trying desperately not to flutter closed at the sensation, his hand and the tissue he was using caught between his chin and her shoulder. "You're going to be put in some **bizarre** situations, and sometimes the choice you make will be the _best_ choice, but you'll still question it. Or it will be the _worst_ , and you won't doubt it at all.

"And, other times, the situation will seem normal, and calm, and fine, and you'll _still_ end up making that **one** _big_ **mistake**. Because you're flawed. We _all_ are. But I will be here, always, to keep you from doing _stupid shit,"_ Derek huffs a breath that could almost be considered a **laugh** at that, "and to help you through it when you do. All we can do, here, is our _best_. It sounds a little cliche, I know, but it's the **truth**."

Derek blinks his eyes back open to stare thoughtfully off into the middle distance, squirming some when Cora kicks out in her sleep. So, so, so quietly, and terribly small, he whispers, confesses, "I don't know if I **want** to be the Left Hand."

"I know," she murmurs, quietly gut-wrenching, pulling him impossibly closer. "Sometimes I don't really want to be the _Alpha."_

He stills a little at that, before just fisting his hands into her clothes and holding onto her like she's the last thing left in the world that could ever possibly make sense. With aching doubts and mourning saturating every breath, they lay together. Even after he's fallen asleep, she stays, waits until sunlight is pooling, bright and liquid and too goddamn chipper, through the window, onto her sibling's bodies and the rumpled comforter half covering the lot of them, before she untangles herself, leaves him with the twins to see what can be done.

What's _been_ done.

And what the hell their plan is, considering **everything** that happened last night.

* * *

☽ Burning ☾

* * *

_"How_ is my sexuality what's important right now?" Laura snaps, and the man- her father, someone she'd always respected, loved, admired, **trusted** \- shakes his head with disdain painted so vividly in his eyes that she honestly feels _sick_.

"Laura, you can't—" "No, _no_. You know what? **Fuck** you! Your _son_ —your _**son**_ has been slowly and deliberately cutting us all off since Paige **died!** He won't **talk** to _anyone!_ He comes home smelling like..." She runs her hands through her hair, making her curls tangle and writhe like oil-slick snakes, hissing their frustration with her. It's _hopeless_. **He's** hopeless (how? How can he be hopeless? Shouldn't he be her **father**? Shouldn't he just—) she can feel it, building up walls against her heart even as the thing beats furiously, fights every brick and mortar for space to **breathe** , for _freedom_ , but she can't stop _trying_ ( **Why** can't she just stop _trying?_ ), "like _pain._ And it's worse than _grief_ , it's—"

"Derek's _had_ his time being the focus, Lulu; and you're _just_ as **important** as _he_ is," the sincerity in his voice is three shades away from being genuinely _disturbing_.

"That's **not** what I meant, and you fucking _know_ it," she seethes, before looking around, suddenly feeling **distanced** , _appalled_.

She knows that, _yes_ , if Philip were here instead of in the other room with Mikey, trying to keep the youngest away from the shouting match, he might defend her- in that mellow, mediatory way of his- if **Peter** were here, instead of off, burying himself and his guilt for how Derek's behaving, now, for how horrible his relationships with his Pack have become, instead of _owning up to what he **did**_ and just fucking _apologizing_ , he'd be bringing her father to his _knees_ without ever even needing to raise his voice. She knows that, if Derek was...

But he _isn't_.

Derek's scared of his own skin, isolating himself, and never fucking _home_ anymore.

Which is **part** of the whole fucking _problem_. And maybe one of the _reasons_ **behind** no one being able to get through to him is that not enough of them are _trying_.

See: no one here _agreeing_ with her father, but no one speaking out _against_ him **either**. Her mother— _ **Alpha**_ , her Aunts, Uncles, cousins, the ones that are not with them by _blood_ but by _choice_ , and Cora and Gabriel, who have slowly become desensitized, slowly adopted the same silence that this room is _ringing_ with.

"This Pack," she spits, and hates herself as much as she hates **him** in this moment, for making her feel this way, for making her _say_ this, "is _broken."_

This time, when she storms out, raging and sobbing and _breaking_ , herself, there is no one to come after her, no one to bring the others' with them to help comfort her when she's calmed down.

There is _no one._

* * *

She ends up at Cahya's, night slowly bleeding into day as she drives, feeling like some sort of poster-girl for teenage rebellion—her windows down, the angstiest radio-station she could _find_ **blaring** , her screaming along with the lyrics as the wind whips her hair and she drives faster than common-sense bids she _should_. But it's _cathartic_ , and, in that, the best time she's actually had in a while, even with worries congealing in her gut and tears of disappointed, helpless rage running rivers down her shame-warm cheeks.

By the time she gets to her girlfriend's apartment, which is deep within Satomi's territory, she's wrung-out, floaty in some odd state of tranquil devastation, with the numbing feeling that, at least for right now, it's out of her hands- out of sight, out of mind- dwelling within her chest.

It's a relief, in a sense, to just let Cahya take care of her. To eat too-spicy homemade food as she watches shitty reality television and psychoanalyzes everyone on the show with one of her best friends in the whole world, to unwind and relax and take a bubble bath with her in her grotesquely green bathtub, to kiss, and ease their wet bodies together, make love on the unmade bed, in sheets that still smell like their last encounter, to listen, quiet, lethargic, sleepy-happy, to the record Cahya put on, as she watches the tigress light a cigarette, watches the way her breasts move with the weightlessness of smoke in her lungs, the way her skin prickles against Laura's touch, the way she shivers and is so honestly, _breathtakingly_ gorgeous.

"I love you, darling," she whispers into Cahya's sweat-cool collarbone, and the girl hums around a silvery smile, the arm underneath Laura's neck, wrapped around her shoulder-blades, sways a little as fingertips play along the notches of her spine, scratching and gentling and caressing, mapping her out, smoothing away every tense, rough line.

"I know it."

Laura pouts up at her, and Cahya takes a pointed drag of her cigarette as misty eyes sparkle with shimmery mirth. In retaliation, Laura pinches the tigress' side, and her lover's body jump-flinches, smoke bursting out of her mouth with her wide, open, sultry laughter. "Alright, alright. I love you too, sayangku. You are a crazy fool and a _puppy dog_ , but I do love you."

Laura grins, snatching Cahya's cigarette to put it out in the ash-tray on her night-stand, straddling the girl with the motion and leaning down to lick the aftertaste of acrid-smoke from her lips, tongue, teeth, gums.

"You taste bitter," she murmurs, but doesn't stop, doesn't _intend_ to.

"I _am_ **bitter** ," Cahya informs her, before, with a deep, half seductive sub-vocal purr reverberating within her body, grabbing her up, and flipping them around. "And _yet."_

Laura offers a tongue-biting smile, all playful exuberance, that quickly turns into a giggling, teeth-clacking kiss, and only devolves from there.

* * *

She's dozing, unthinking, lying tangled with Cahya when it happens.

It is not a gradual, inhibited thing. It's all at once, pit-fall, cut-off, in the dark.

She was born with these emotional threads knotted up around her ribs, leads to her Pack-mates that pulled, tugged, were sometimes loose, sometimes unsettled, sometimes not, but _never_ **uncomfortable** because they'd _always **been there**._ The copperine, electric current of her mother, the black leather imprint of her father, the leafy, cotton-sweet of Philip, the twins' teddybear fluff, _all_ of them, fingers curled around her soul, ribbons tied in pretty gift-bows around her heart, _sensations_ , sometimes muted, sometimes full, but **now** —static. Dead air.

Oh, but it hurts to breathe, her lungs ache, and she loses herself for a moment as the **power** of her inheritance _consumes_ her (too early, too _early, tooearlytooearlytooearly_ ).

No. _No._ Please, Gods, no. They can't be, _this_ can't be——

Mama. Daddy. Deartháir mór. Please, please, _**please**_.

"They're _gone,"_ she breathes, and Cahya is looking at her with an expression she doesn't have time to decipher, doesn't have time to _look_ at, because.

There's one left.

One tiny, inconsolable, unsilenced thread. Like water-lily roots and swamps sparkling in the moonlight. Her baby brother. _Derek_.

It's pulsing, humming with **Alpha** and _protect_ and _lead_ and _duty_.

He _needs_ her. He needs her and she holds onto that because... because if she doesn't she's going to _break_.

* * *

He's **roaring** when she gets there, the flames climbing high into the sky, the smoke a heavy, _heavy_ thing in the air. It smudges the too-bright, _choking_ scene, with a sick-murky grey, and she's _unmoored_ , lost to the poignant sight of the little boy she loves so well, his head thrown back, eyes scrunched tight, befanged jaw open so, _so_ wide, face covered in ashes and tear-tracks and _agony_.

The sound erupting from him is as volcanic as the magma consuming their house, crackling with horrifying, doom-bilious, _mocking_ laughter.

She can't—she can't _breathe_.

They're _dead_. They're _**dead**_.

Pale skin and raven black hair and _suffering_ , set in picturesque focus against the backdrop of a world on _fire_.

Her heart breaks, as the grievous wolfsong _holds_. Stutters, as it is undercut by _sirens_. Surges, as she realizes what that _means_.

"Derek! _Derek!"_ She runs to him, and, shaken, too full-up, too empty, _incapable_ of thinking _clearly_ , covers his mouth with her hand, folding her body around his from behind. "You can't— you have to stop," and she's weeping, now, into the back of his neck, that joint that connects shoulder to spine. "Humans are coming, you have to—" but he _can't_ , it's so _obvious_ that he _can't_. She's gasping for air, light-headed, her lungs getting stained by soot-smog, both of them shaking so _violently_ , and, Gods— _Gods_ , she's trying. She's _trying_.

"Come," She begs, whimpers, whines, _sobs_ , forcefully turning him around and reeling him into her, savagely, awfully, making him sink his fangs into her skin, right above her collarbone, **just** in time, as the firetrucks and sheriff's cruisers appear.

The humans swarm around the heat-haze- the voluptuous body, maw, dream-like **nightmare** \- like _flies_ swarm around _death_.

There is pandemonium, as they slake the thing's thirst until it is nothing—that which incinerated her home, her life, her family, her _possibility_. It shouldn't be so easy to bring it down. Like giving Mikey to Philip when he's having a temper-tantrum, and oh, she's going to be _sick_.

They're dead, they're—

A deputy takes them away from the scene, lets them hold ferociously onto each other, mercifully doesn't mention the fact that Derek's holding on by way of _teeth_ , the fact that there's blood dripping from where his mouth is connected to her tendon, soaking her shirt.

Physical pain... that's easy.

And this. This is nowhere _near_ over, is it?

* * *

"Breathe," Laura says, when they're in the sheriff's station, sitting side-by-side, hands interwoven, and he doesn't know if she's telling him or herself, but—

He listens.

**Breathes.**

**Author's Note:**

> I am in _pain_ , not even gonna lie.
> 
> [[ **Keeping in mind that I do not know these languages, and am very open to being corrected, below is the ~~probably poorly translated~~ key. I love you guys!**
> 
> Irish :: Deirfiúr Beag = little/baby sister
> 
> Deartháir Mór = big brother
> 
> Indonesian :: Gila = crazy/mad
> 
> Kamu Ini Mustahil = you're impossible/absurd
> 
> Sayangku = my love/dear/adoration
> 
> Sayang = love/dear/adoration]]


End file.
